[CPRI Chair Talk] Prof Sukumar Brahma on 26th June 2023 at 11 am at MMCR, EE Dept

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Title: Source-Agnostic, Inherently Directional Time-Domain Distance Relay

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Abstract:

There have been reported instances of legacy numerical distance relays failing to identify fault direction when they are fed by an inverter based resource (IBR) – solar, wind or storage. This is largely because the response to fault from an inverter is radically different than the fault response of a traditional synchronous machine. This presentation will explain the reasons for misoperations and introduce design, implementation, testing and validation of a distance relay designed in time domain which avoids polarization problems in numerical legacy relays that operate in phasor domain. It will also report superior performance of the proposed relay when compared to the only time-domain distance relay in the market that operates based on travelling waves.

Bio:

Sukumar Brahma received his Bachelor of Engineering from Gujarat University in 1989, Master of Technology from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 1997, and PhD in from Clemson University in 2003; all in Electrical Engineering. He joined Clemson university as the Dominion Energy Distinguished Professor of Power Engineering in August 2018. He also serves as the director of the industry-funded Clemson University Electric Power Research Association (CUEPRA). Before joining Clemson he was William Kersting Endowed Chair Professor at New Mexico State University, USA. Dr. Brahma has chaired IEEE Power and Energy Society’s Power and Energy Education Committee, Life Long Learning Subcommittee and Distribution System Analysis Subcommittee. He is a member of the Power System Relaying and Control Committee (PSRCC), where he has been contributing to and leading working groups that produce reports, guides and standards in the area of power system protection. He has been an editor for IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, and served as Guest Editor-in-Chief for the Special Issue on Frontiers of Power System Protection for the journal. His research, widely published and funded by the National Science Foundation, US Department of Energy, utilities, and other government agencies has focused on different aspects of power system modeling, analysis, and protection. Fundamentally, it spans across diverse areas of electrical engineering and computer science, integrating signal processing, machine learning, control and communication to holistically approach the emerging problems in the power and energy domain. Current research, funded by the US Department of Energy, investigates and addresses protection and fault location issues in integration of renewables with power systems and develops new paradigms in protection of smart grid, at both transmission and distribution levels.

Dr. Brahma is a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE and CPRI Visiting Chair Professor at IISC in 2022-23. He has been elected IEEE Fellow “for contributions to power system protection with distributed and renewable generation”.